


Tranquil

by DeCarabas



Series: Fugitives Together [3]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Act 1, Blue Hawke, Dragon Age Quest: Tranquility, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 14:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6243838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a cut line of Carver's: <i>The templars took his mind? They can actually do that?</i></p><p>The Hawke brothers have an argument after the Tranquility quest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tranquil

The Gallows docks were quiet, Carver and Hawke alone at the water’s edge as they waited for the boatman who’d take them back into the city now that they’d dropped off the last of Solvitus’s ingredients and gotten paid. The silence was broken only by the occasional burst of laughter from a knot of templar recruits on their break, gathered underneath one of the great bronze statues at the gate, and Carver kept looking back towards them restlessly, getting up to pace.

The recruits were too far away for Hawke to make out their conversation, but he didn’t have to; he’d heard enough inside the gates. The templars who’d died in the chantry several nights ago were still on everyone’s mind, but no one was talking about an illegal Tranquility. And no one was talking about Anders’ spirit friend.

When the templar recruits made their way back through the gates of the Gallows, break time over, Carver stopped pacing and sat back down beside Hawke.

“I could have delivered those,” Carver said in an undertone. “You didn’t need to come.”

Hawke tilted his head to look up at his brother, too tall even when he was sitting down. “Volunteering to run my errands for me?” he said lightly. “There’s a few things you can pick up for dinner, then.”

Carver gave him a look.

Yeah, he knew that wasn’t what Carver had meant. Best to stay far away from the Gallows unless he wanted to become a permanent resident. And if this trip had really just been about dropping off Solvitus’s ingredients, he would have left it to Carver. But after what he’d seen at the chantry, Hawke needed to hear the rumors around the Gallows for himself.

“It’s not as if I haven’t been here before,” Hawke said. “Nothing’s really changed.”

“How can you say—” Carver broke off, looking up at the gate into the Gallows as a woman emerged and headed towards them. And Carver subsided, glaring out over the water instead of at Hawke, shoulders hunched high and tight and unhappy. “You’re unbelievable.”

She placed a heavy crate on the stones beside them, alongside a stack of similar crates waiting for the boatman to pick up, and Hawke wondered if they were filled with enchanted goods to be sold elsewhere, or if they were just sending out their laundry. No shipments had ever ‘fallen’ off a Chantry boat and into Athenril’s hands, and Hawke was starting to get curious.

The sunburst symbol on her forehead was almost hidden by her hood. Maybe that was why they wore them. He might not have noticed the sunburst at all if he hadn’t been looking for it now, counting the number of Tranquil in the courtyard, thinking about everything Anders had said.

She caught his eyes as she straightened, held his gaze. He'd been staring. He hadn't meant to.

“I am fortunate to be Tranquil,” she said. “So many mages are plagued by unrest.”

Carver barked a laugh, and her expression didn’t change.

* * *

Carver was quiet on the boat ride back into the city, but when they disembarked, he elbowed Hawke and jerked his head in the direction of an alley that opened onto Darktown, onto Athenril’s network of tunnels running underneath the alienage. And Hawke nodded, ducked into the alley ahead of his brother. The sounds of the city filtered down into the tunnels, a constant hum of muffled voices.

“I’ve been thinking,” Carver said as they walked. “Why don’t we forget the Deep Roads? All that money we’ve saved, we could buy passage back home. Never had to worry about bribe money there.”

The tunnel was too narrow for them to walk side by side comfortably, and Hawke glanced over his shoulder, trying to gauge what his brother was thinking. Hard to judge. Carver was mostly looking at where he was putting his feet.

“Home?” Hawke echoed. “What, Lothering?”

Home was a patch of blighted land where nothing would be growing for years.

“Ferelden,” Carver said, looking up just long enough to meet his eyes, defensive. “You know what I mean. Not like we’ve never had to start over before, is it? Has to be better than staying here.”

Hawke made a noncommittal noise. The last time they’d had to move before Kirkwall, Carver had still been young enough for Hawke to carry him on his back. He hadn’t been the one getting the farm up and running. And this time Father was gone. Bethany was gone. Mother wasn’t getting any younger. It would be just the two of them working, and he’d be chaining Carver to a life hidden away out of some need to protect his apostate brother, again. “I don’t know. Mother’s got her heart set on that Amell estate.”

“She’ll live. We should _go_.” A plaintive tone creeping into his voice at the last. And after a moment’s silence, he said quietly, “The templars took his mind. They can actually do that.”

And Hawke listened to the sound of their footsteps, the sounds of the street filtering down from above, counted the branching passages opening up off the tunnel.

“What, did you think Father made that up?” he said.

“Of course not, I just—it’s different, seeing it.” Carver’s voice steadied, and he said, “How can you just walk into the Gallows after that? That could be you.”

“Trying not to think about that, thanks.”

“Brother.” Carver’s footsteps behind him stopped. “You can’t seriously think Mother would want you to stay just for her damn estate.”

And Hawke shrugged his shoulders, shifting the weight of the staff against his back. The polearm, rather. Because somehow, looking like an armed mercenary had wound up being the sensible option in his life.

“Remember the fair in Denerim?” Hawke said instead of answering. It had been a memorable event, the farthest they’d ever traveled before the Blight. “Father took me and Bethany to this shop. Interesting proprietor.” He raised his hand and traced a circle on his own forehead to illustrate. He’d thought it was a toy shop at first. But then they’d left Carver with their mother and gone back on their own for a conversation with the man behind the counter, who spoke as if he was half in a dream and answered so slowly and patiently to even the most personal and insulting of questions. First time Hawke had seen that sunburst on someone’s forehead. And the only time he’d seen it, before Kirkwall.

Bethany had only just come into her magic, and it had been like a game for a while, having someone else to share his lessons with, someone to compete with. He’d been so eager to show her everything she had to know, and everything she could do, until they were pestering each other over whose flames burned brightest, hottest; afternoons deep in the forest picking out targets, shattering stones in midair. Showing off.

Showing off could have consequences, and their father had made sure they knew it. Hawke had nightmares for weeks.

“Kirkwall’s not the only place with Tranquility. None of this is anything new, really.”

It’s why he’d stayed far away from the Lothering chantry except for holidays. Though Bethany had loved spending time there. He’d never understood that.

Hawke leaned against the wall, worn and rotting wood. The tunnel branched off to their right, marked by a symbol carved by one of Athenril’s people to show the way, and he traced the lines of it, idly picking at the edges.

“…Why just you and Bethany? Didn’t he think I’d want to know?”

“Not the point, Carver.”

“Right. Sure. Fine.” Carver huffed a frustrated sigh, then fixed him with a look, head hanging and glaring at him like a bull getting ready to charge. “And this whole time you’ve been mouthing off to the bloody knight-captain. What is _wrong_ with you?”

“What am I supposed to do, keep my head down the rest of my life?”

“Oh, sure, like you’re the only one!” Carver threw his hands up. “So, what, we shouldn’t have bothered? Wish you'd told me sooner. I could be guarding some teyrn by now. I could be a captain by now, not a damn smuggler playing run and fetch in the sewers—this is all Athenril’s fault, isn’t it? You used to have enough sense to stay out of the templars’ way. All that time yelling at _me_ for even talking to them, but when it’s you, that’s just fine, is it? And that bloody Warden—we’re just lucky no one saw us at the chantry. The moment we saw what he was, we should have run in the opposite direction, but you just keep—”

“That's enough,” Hawke snapped. Anders was—well, he was inspiring, really. But this wasn’t about him. Or about Athenril, putting his magic to work, making him see it as something useful for the first time in his life.

All right, maybe it was about them a little.

“This isn’t about them,” he said anyway. “Or you. This is just me. If I mess up, I’m the one who pays for it.” And back home, every precaution taken had been for the family, for all of them, but ever since Bethany—the way Carver ducked his head around the knight-captain, impossibly trying to make himself look smaller; the way their mother automatically positioned herself between Hawke and the templar in the market—it wasn’t the family problem anymore. It was just him.

“And that’s got nothing to do with me, does it? You get yourself caught—” Carver jerked a thumb at his own forehead to mimic the sunburst. “I’m supposed to be fine with that? Fuck you.”

“That’s not what I’m saying—”

“Really? Because it sure sounds like it.”

Carver pushed past him, heading down the tunnel. And Hawke debated letting him go, giving him space. But he followed.

“I’m not trying to get caught,” he said, aiming for patience. He was trying very, very hard not to get caught, thank you. He was ready to walk into the Deep Roads and surround himself with darkspawn just for the sake of not getting caught. Better the darkspawn than templars. “But that doesn’t mean we should just bow to everything the templars say. Might as well be locked up already. It’s what Anders was saying, the Chantry counts on people being driven by fear—”

“Fine for him, he’s a Warden! He can go ahead and to talk back to templars all he likes.” Carver didn’t slow his steps, determinedly looking forward and not at Hawke. “You’re not him. You can damn well be driven by fear once in a while, it’s good for you.”

Hawke wasn’t at all certain that Anders’ former Warden status was that much of a shield. Definitely not if the templars heard about his spirit friend.

But Carver had stopped walking. They’d reached the ladder that would take them up to a narrow side street at the edge of the alienage, a short walk back to Gamlen’s place, and this wasn’t a conversation either of them wanted to continue in broad daylight, with an audience.

“Carver,” he said.

“Don’t. I just—I’m not going to see you wind up like that,” Carver said, gesturing toward Hawke’s forehead without looking. “But you just keep pushing, and I—you can’t keep asking me to go along with that.”

And then he was climbing the ladder, up onto the streets of Kirkwall.

* * *

The side street let out at the base of the stairs that divided the alienage from the rest of the slums, where the leaves of the vhenadahl blocked out most of the sunlight. And Carver stopped short. “Oh, that’s just perfect.”

Hawke leaned around his brother to see a templar standing in the center of the square. He had to agree; that was just about fitting with how this day was going.

“Please, Ser Thrask!” an elven woman was saying to the templar. “He won't go to the Circle willingly, but it’s the only place...”

“Madam, we’ll do our best to find your son, but I cannot guarantee his safety if he continues to resist templar jurisdiction.”

“He’s just a boy!”

The thing to do in this situation was to keep walking. Just head right up the stairs and away from the alienage, like he hadn’t even heard. And Carver was giving him a pointed look, tilting his head toward the stairs. Hanging back and watching from the shadows like this was a great way to make themselves look suspicious.

“I am sorry for your loss, Mistress. But I can offer your son mercy only if he turns himself in. The templars cannot tolerate apostates.”

And the woman started sobbing as the templar walked away.

“Brother,” Carver said. The _don’t_ didn’t need to be spoken.

“That could be Mother,” Hawke said, voice pitched low so as not to carry.

“Yes, that could be Mother, with the templars on her doorstep. Leave it. Brother, please.”

And he should, he really should. But he couldn’t help wondering what Anders would say if he’d seen this.

Hawke stepped away from the stairs, towards the elven woman, to ask if there was anything he could do. And he didn’t have to look back to know Carver would follow.


End file.
